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Day Four (Thursday April 25th): Colour ReviewWhat are your favourite colours for knitted or crocheted projects. Have a think about what colours you seem to favour when yarn shopping and crafting.

Only after writing this part of your post should you then actually look to see what colours you have used in your projects. Make a quick tally of what colours you have used in your projects over the past year and compare it to the colours you have written about. Compare this, in turn, to the colours that are most dominant in your yarn stash – do they correlate?

Now think back to your house animal – do the colours you have chosen relate to your animal in anyway – if you are in the house of peacock, for example, are your projects often multicoloured and bright?

This prompt comes at a bad time for doing it exactly as written. Over the past month or so, I’ve been reorganizing my stash, which means I’ve had a fresh look at much of it lately. In addition, having just finished a project two days ago—which will get blogged about once I’ve gotten past Knitting and Crochet Blog Week—I’m deciding on my next portable project. (The Wedge Pullover is #1 in my queue, but between writing for KCBW, a work conference tomorrow, and Yarnover this weekend, there’s no way I’ll even be doing its math until May. Meanwhile, I need something to take to that conference and to Yarnover.)

But I can certainly talk about my favorite colors for knitting and crocheting. Almost everything I make, I make for myself. Almost everything I make for myself is clothing or accessories. Which means that even though I like lots and lots and lots of colors, I try to work with the ones I think I look best wearing: the cool, muted pastels. When I’m standing in a yarn store or flipping through a catalog, I hope that any yarn I might like comes in pink, blue, lavender, and/or green. I’ll vary at times, usually towards a darker, brighter shade of the Four, but I’ve been reminded over and over again that no matter how lovely the warm colors are, I can only handle them as accents. I’m getting better with neutrals, too. I’ve rarely tackled anything besides off-white, and I’ll probably never want to wear a pure white or pure black sweater, but I’m starting to see grays as attractive colors. This must be some sign of maturity, right? (If I’m not wearing the item, the color restrictions are off. Bring on the golden yellow, the orange, the bright red! Or more pink, purple, blue, and green, for that matter. Although maybe not the two sets together.)

So what colors were my 2012-2013 projects?

Pink/aqua/yellow.

Shades of purple.

Blue/purple/gray.

Mottled light blue and green.

Pink/lavender/gray.

Periwinkle.

Navy/purple/green.

Orange and olive (a gift for an orange-and-olive-wearing friend).

Indigo.

Magenta and gray.

Royal blue splashed with purple (a gift for another friend).

Lavender splashed with warm pink and muted gold.

Yes, with exceptions for gifts, I’ve been good about sticking to my preferences. As for the stash, there’s slightly more variety there, but not much. Some yellow yarns are there, leftover from blankets or destined as accents. There’s more gray yarn there than in my projects, since I’ve only just started acquiring it in any quantity. Ask me this question again in a year or two, and there might be more gray projects and less gray stash. (Or not. Might be more gray projects and more gray stash.)

And to answer the final question, does any of this relate to my house mascot, the Monkey? Not unless there’s a species of green or purple monkey I was unaware of. Brown is one of the colors least represented in my stash. It can be lovely—we’re talking the color of chocolate here, after all—but I’ve never cared much for what I look like wearing it. Perhaps there’s a color that symbolically represents monkeys rather than literally, but I can’t say as I’m thinking of one.